Signs of autophagy?

(Susan) #26

I live in Canada, and we do have Government healthcare, but it is for essential services. They consider this, and circumcision of baby boys, and removing warts, and any optional surgeries as not necessary so are not covered.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #27

Doug, I am fully focused on autophagy now and body composition as opposed to weight loss. I am starting to exp experiment with hacks for this. One important thing I have come to accept is that you can’t gorge on protein and get autophagy easily. Bikman and Niemen with their unlimited protein not contributing to weight gain may be true, but Jason Fung makes it plain that autophagy is driven by the absence of protein and carbohydrate. He mentioned Fat Fasting in a video I just saw yesterday. This is something that very much intrigued me. So I have cut my daily protein from approx 150g. to about 90g. per day. I am going to spend about 2-3 days per week consuming between 800-1100 calories of fat with as little protein and carbs as I can. I believe from viewing the Fung video that this will give me significant autophagy on those days without hunger, causing the recycling of protein as well as fat loss from the caloric deficit. I started an accountability thread this morning about my next moves 10 months into eating a ketogenic diet. I’m doing other things too to see where this journey takes me in the future.

(Doug) #28

David, yes - autophagy is primarily in response to nutrient deprivation. Protein and carbohydrates really kill the increase we normally find with fasting through their effect on the nutrient sensors mTOR and AMPK, and on the insulin/glucagon levels and ratio. Fat has a lesser effect, but I wouldn’t bank on “a lot” of fat not affecting autophagy much - I just don’t know, there. From all I’ve read, I don’t think a tablespoon or ~15 grams of fat in a cup of coffee, for example, is a worry if upregulated autophagy is what’s desired. When fasting, we’re burning our own fat, so if that little bit is coming in from the outside, I don’t think it’s a big deal.

Exercise stimulates autophagy 𝑖𝑛 𝑠𝑘𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑐𝑙𝑒𝑠, and there’s a low, basal rate of autophagy that is at least supposed to be at work within certain tissues. Much of the human nervous system is this way, being composed of cells that are ‘post-mitotic’ - that cannot divide and multiply to dilute out the effects of old, faulty, damaged cells and cell parts. So some “house cleaning” needs to always be going on. The failure of this is thought to contribute to Alzheimer’s Disease and other neurological problems.

Bikman has a great point about how coming from a ketogenic diet makes an ENORMOUS difference in how the body reacts to eating protein, as far as the insulin/glucagon ratio, but this really isn’t aimed at autophagy or not, I think. I see no reasonable expectation of increased autophagy when eating protein, in the first place.

Dr. Fung talks about autophagy here and there, but I’ve never seen him really be focused on it. I should watch that video too - I don’t know it. Yet my first reaction is that 800-1100 calories a day means no upregulated autophagy, as simple as that.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #29

While I believe that fasting permits autophagy at an increased rate, because the absence of dietary protein forces the body to find other sources of amino acids, I also believe that autophagy is possible in the presence of dietary protein, because I never had very much loose skin during my weight loss, and have none at all at the moment. I don’t fast, for various reasons, but my weight loss was slow enough for the rate of autophagy I was experiencing to keep up with it.

Something to bear in mind is that all proteins have a life-span, which may range from minutes to years. At the end of that lifespan, the protein is deconstructed into its constituent amino acids, which then either enter the labile pool for re-use, or get de-aminated and excreted. So the process of autophagy is always occurring, albeit at a more limited rate than when we fast. In fact, this process of proteolysis is part of the reason that protein is an essential part of the human diet, because there is always a certain unavoidable loss of nitrogen to the de-amination of amino acids.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #30

@OldDoug Here’s the video. :slightly_smiling_face:

Am I Getting Kicked Out Of Autophagy If I Eat Salt A Few Hours Later After My Meal?

(Doug) #31

Paul, I see different processes there. The generally smaller, shorter-lived proteins get handled, but it’s not autophagy, it’s the " Ubiquitin Proteasome Pathway" and it’s proteasomes, rather than autophagosomes/lysosomes doing it. The bigger, longer-lived stuff, all the way up to whole cellular organelles, is where autophagy does it’s thing.

It’s self-limiting, to an extent, since proteins are being broken down into amino acids, as you say. Leucine is the most potent inhibitor of autophagy there is, and even if we’re eating zero protein, some leucine is being produced by autophagy, and mTOR is very sensitive to it.

(Doug) #32

Bob, the glucose/ketones deal really bugs me, with respect to autophagy. One’s individual insulin sensitivity and fat-adaptation will greatly affect the numbers and ratios, and this is before we even get to considerations of autophagy. Somebody on a strict keto diet may have a lot of ketones and fairly low blood sugar, but be eating two or three meals a day, and shouldn’t even be thinking about upregulated autophagy at that point.

In humans, the normal thing is for the insulin/glucagon ratio and levels to get more favorable for autophagy for at least 5 or 6 days of fasting. I’m not at all saying that impressive gains in autophagy aren’t obtained during the 2nd, 3rd and 4th days of fasting - I think they are. But it still takes a good while to really get ourselves depleted, and the process is one of trailing off supplies, like with glycogen. Most of our stored glycogen will be gone by sometime in the 2nd day of fasting, but it’s still going down, slower and slower…

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #33

That’s because the body has evolved mechanisms for dealing with all sorts of conditions. The example you cite is merely one of them. I would like to inject a note of caution into this discussion: As we have found with calorie-counting, trying to override the body’s natural processes to achieve a goal can have unintended consequences. It is always wise to proceed cautiously.

So in this case, promoting autophagy by fasting, it might be wise to re-examine just why one considers it important to improve autophagy, and what one hopes to achieve by promoting it. How badly are we in need of autophagy, for example? How do we know what the problem is, and how do we know that autophagy is the best solution for solving it? Think things through, in other words.

What I am trying to get at is illustrated by the thinking that “excess fat adds extra pounds to my weight, therefore, I need to lose weight, therefore the number on the scale is extremely important”—a thought-process in which the distinction between fat-weight and the weight of other types of tissue gets lost, and thinking gets distorted. I would hate for that sort of distortion to occur in people’s thinking about autophagy.

(Jane) #34

Not a scientific study but my n=2 observations. My husband saw his skin tags shrinking and disappearing while just eating a keto diet before he started fasting. My hair got darker before I started fasting while eating keto.

Once we started fasting for autophagy his rate of skin tag shrinkage and disappearance sped up. The dark spots on both our arms started lightening after fasting. My loose skin on my belly and thighs started firming up after fasting.

So if these are signs of autophagy my conclusion is we had a low level of autophagy going on because we were in ketosis and we regularly went 17 hours without eating (6 pm - 11 am)

Fasting speeded up the process… although it is still a glacially slow process - we still see results. Over months, not days or weeks.

We are both cancer survivors so we will continue to do at least 36 hour fasts a couple of times a month as a preventative from now on. This is done completely on faith because we have no idea what is actually going on at a cellular level in our bodies. But not eating for a day a couple of times a month is cheap and easy and with the long historical precedence of fasting I do not believe it will do any harm.

(Doug) #35

David, I’m thinking the Fungster goes a little too far, there. While fat has much less effect on insulin secretion than protein and carbohydrates, it’s not zero, and one’s insulin level does affect autophagy. And while I don’t know all the particulars, I’m guessing that the presence of food, even if pure fat, in the stomach, small intestine and then going into the bloodstream from there (rather than the relatively slow breaking-down of stored triglycerides) has hormonal/biochemical effects that may affect what is a fairly complicated dance of regulation and counter-regulation.

It really is a guess - there is a horrible lack of sure information and studies about human fasting and autophagy.

(Full Metal KETO AF) #36

I agree that fasting could be taken to an unhealthy place. As I understand it muscle loss is the last resort in autophagy, to avert death from starvation. Your body prioritizes getting rid of unnecessary protein structures, dead or dying cells and such. It’s not anywhere close to calorie restriction dieting on a long term basis. I don’t know what is happening in my body, but yesterday I ate almost fat only, 4 carbs from espresso and 9g. of incidental protein which I think was a really high estimate considering the visual appearance of the bacon and I dipped into the 150’s for the first time since I started keto after 2 months of stalling. I am definitely continuing my experimentation in radically mixing up my routine in ways that I haven’t yet. There’s so many ideas and knowledge available here, what worked for me did for quite a while. I don’t know if I am up to 4-5 days of EF, but yesterday was relatively easy without hunger until near bed time. It apparently is working to bust my stall. Check out the short video I linked to. I started an accountability thread after 10 months here just yesterday, to document what happens next for me. I will be cycling my eating throughout the week to mix things up. I did 3 days of carnivore followed by a regular keto day to celebrate my son’s birthday and did a Fat Fast yesterday and I will continue that today to see how much weight I drop. According to the Fung video that I posted a link to I should be getting autophagy benefits from this routine of fat fasting off and on.

https://www.ketogenicforums.com/t/full-metal-keto-next-steps-and-progress-thread/89541/5

(Doug) #37

Right on, Jane. I had raised keloid scars on both legs on the shin areas. 6 years and no change. After I started fasting, within 16 months I noticed they were shrunk down to skin level, leaving just an outline, or even entirely vanished.

Good point. For most people I have to think there is value in fasting “at least once in a while.” Autophagy and immune system regeneration is pretty well established. Stem cell rejuvenation - I don’t know about this but it’s certainly being talked about a good bit.

(Susan) #38

Feeling hungry now on my fast of 66 hours, so this is encouraging me, thanks @Janie!

(Alexandru Radu) #39

great ! thank you ! so 20g carbs or less per day ? is this true ? and also how can you measure them ?

(Cancer Fighting Ketovore :)) #40

Are you asking how to get under 20g of carbs a day?

If so, the best way to do that is by weighing your food and logging it using a program like CarbManager or Chronometer.

(Eric - The patient needs to be patient!) #41

Yes I try to stay <20g carbs per day. Most days significantly less. Some days slightly over. I tracked macros long enough to have an idea. I don’t track now. If I’m off it does not matter, I produce ketones (>0.5 mmol/dl) and am very fat adapted.

Also I don’t eat much that contributes carbs to my diet except when I eat refried beans. If I know at dinner I’m having avocado I eat carnivore + a little cheese for lunch.

Today I had 8oz Ground Beef, 2 fried eggs, a few pork rinds for lunch. I do eat large green olives, a few.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) split this topic #42

A post was split to a new topic: How to access the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Food Composition Data Base

This was PJ’s excellent tutorial on how to get nutrition data from the USDA. It seemed so good that it deserved its own topic in the Science forum, in the Resources section. I heartily recommend checking it out.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) split this topic #43

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: How to access the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s Food Composition Data Base

(mole person) #45

That’s weird. I’m in Canada too and I can get my doctor to surgically remove moles and stitch up the wound for only $20. $75 for a skin tag is insane.

(Susan) #46

Mine refused to do it period, and said he had to send me to a specialist for it, and it would $75 per one. I got rid of the two bad ones myself, and the others are small, so hoping they go away. I tried putting apple cider vinegar on them and duct tape, and that didn’t work. There is a kit at Walmart to do it yourself I will buy and try if they don’t go away with fasting/autophagy. There are a lot of people on here and on sites I have seen online that said theirs went away, so I am hopeful.

The ones remaining now are not bothering me, so not sure I want to spend any money t get them off, as we are on a tight budget. Especially with my hubby having brain surgery coming up again, and will have to lose about a month of work, with no pay (his work doesn’t have sick pay) so trying to stick to what is needed more than what is wanted at the moment. My doctor tends to want to send us to specialists for like everything… my husband has Bipolar, Diverticulitis,Hydrocephalus and Parkinson’s. We were referred to the neurologist for the Parkinson’s back in August when his neurologist for the Hydro said he had the Park.

So he brought in the specialist for that, and we met him, and he said he would see my hubby (told the Hydro doctor to put in a referral for an appointment and he did) and I just got the letter in the mail that the first appointment my hubby has to see the Parkinson specialist is in May 2020… but our Hydrocephalus doctor told him he will have the shunt surgery (had third ventriloscopy surgery in December) having another MRI on Tuesday night, and then when they call us for the Shunt one, and if he wants any of the Parkinson medications before the appointment in May, he will be happy to prescribe them. So far my husband hasn’t wanted to take them, as he is trying to work full time for as long as he can, he is 55.